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The future of industrial hemp on the up

Managing Director of Textile and Composite Industries, Adrian Clarke tells Macquarie irrigators they might get better bang for their water buck from industrial hemp.

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Irrigators in New South Wales' Macquarie Valley are looking for water-wise crops this year; their dam has only 19 per cent capacity of water.

Hemp is a fibre that has been gaining favour as an efficient user of water, and as an ecologically sound crop for farmers to include in their rotation.

But hemp has been hard to sell to growers in the past; it's a bulky crop and needs to be processed close to where it's grown - there aren't any processing plants in the region, and that has limited the crop's potential.

Adrian Clarke's company Textile and Composite Industries, has developed a mobile 'decorticator' which can process the hemp in the field; he and marketing Director Charles Kovess have recently been in the Macquarie Valley, speaking to prospective growers.

Mr Clarke has been working on improving the potential for modern industrial hemp for 20 years, he says the fact that his machine is mobile, is the great leap forward.

He is enthusiastic about the properties of hemp, its versatility as a source of raw materials, and the fact that it requires less water than many other irrigated crops.

"Hemp also has a short growing period and leaves a large amount of organic matter in the soil; they are finding in Europe that it has a very beneficial effect on later crops."

However hemp is a very small player in the big fibre picture, only providing a minimal amount of grown fibres used in manufacturing today.

Marketing Director of Textile and Composite Industries Charles Kovess, says the potential is enormous, but the task now is to match up the potential demand and the potential supply and develop both ends in balance with each other.